


reach out and see me (i'm losing my head)

by nirav



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Missing Scene, bees schnees week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:48:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25413442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/pseuds/nirav
Summary: “What’s wrong?” Yang says softly, leaning over on one elbow, close enough to the edge of the bed that Blake can feel the low hum of heat that constantly radiates off of her, and she leans towards it unconsciously.“Weiss,” Blake says quietly.  She tilts her head towards the door, one eyebrow lifting, and Yang nods, yawns, rubs at her eyes with one hand.  She flips her blankets away and slides off the bed, landing too close to Blake, nearly crushing her toes and mumbling a sleepy apology, but Blake curls a hand around hers-- her left hand, the warm one, selfishly, because Atlas is cold but Yang has always been warm like home, warm like Menagerie, warm like safety, and Blake could use a little of that these days-- and sets off after Weiss.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Weiss Schnee/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 18
Kudos: 221





	reach out and see me (i'm losing my head)

**Author's Note:**

> day one of bees schnees week! prompt: canon compliant/missing scenes.

_reach out, touch me, stuck on the edge_   
_reach out, darkness is winning again_   
_reach out and see me, i'm losing my head_   
_reach out, i can't fight without you my friend_

* * *

Atlas is _cold_. 

Objectively, Blake’s always known that Solitas, sprawling further north than anywhere she’d ever been in her nomadic childhood with the Fang, was buried under a colder climate than anywhere else on Remnant, and she’d burrowed deep in her aura in the woods outside of Argus to protect against the air there, barely above freezing, but nothing had prepared for the constant undercurrent of bone-deep freeze settling under Atlas’s climate regulators and the Academy’s internal heaters. The standard issue Atlas Academy pajamas they’d been given-- heavy t-shirts and fleece-lined sweatpants-- and the layers of blankets on the bunks have managed to take the edge off the chill blanketing her skin, but done nothing for the way her bones feel _frozen_. 

Her ears pin back against her head, the very tips aching in the cold, and she wrinkles her nose and flicks them back and forth, back and forth, methodically twitching them just shy of her pillow and staring up at the bottom of the bunk over hers and willing herself to sleep because if she’s asleep then at least she won’t feel cold anymore. She screws her eyes shut and breathes in slowly, focusing on the quiet of the room-- Yang’s soft snores from the bunk above her, Ruby’s empty bunk because she’s off with Penny like she so often is now, Weiss and her usual inability to stay still--

\--except Weiss isn’t making any noise at all. Blake’s eyes open slowly, night vision clearing easily and making out the dents and scratches on the underside of Yang’s bunk. Weiss normally never stays still in her sleep, kicking her blankets off, in constant movement and constant tension, incapable of relaxation even when she slept, but there’s not a whisper of sound from her bunk.

Until, suddenly, there is. Blake’s ears perk straight up at the sound of Weiss’s blankets moving slowly, bare feet settling on the floor, and she shuts her eyes automatically, opening one halfway at the sound of the door opening with a barely audible creak, just in time to see Weiss slipping out of the room. 

Uncertainty settles in Blake’s bones, displacing the cold, and she sits up slowly. Above her, Yang’s snores have stopped, and Blake stands to peer over the side of the bunk to where Yang’s blinking at her sleepily.

“What’s wrong?” Yang says softly, leaning over on one elbow, close enough to the edge of the bed that Blake can feel the low hum of heat that constantly radiates off of her, and she leans towards it unconsciously. 

“Weiss,” Blake says quietly. She tilts her head towards the door, one eyebrow lifting, and Yang nods, yawns, rubs at her eyes with one hand. She flips her blankets away and slides off the bed, landing too close to Blake, nearly crushing her toes and mumbling a sleepy apology, but Blake curls a hand around hers-- her left hand, the warm one, selfishly, because Atlas is cold but Yang has always been warm like home, warm like Menagerie, warm like safety, and Blake could use a little of that these days-- and sets off after Weiss with a small smile anyways.

It takes ages to find her. They’re bunking in one of the wings kept for visiting hunters, thankfully separate from Academy students, smaller than the dormitories but still cavernous. Most of the rooms are open and unoccupied, and they peer through doors, flicking lightswitches on and off, checking kitchens and bathrooms and training rooms until they finally find a weapons workshop with a light shining through the glass door.

Weiss is sitting on a stool at a workbench, Myrtenaster disassembled and organized into meticulous pieces in front of her, head bent over a dust chamber as she cleans it. She looks impossibly small, hair tied up lazily instead of in a neat braid, shoulders slumped instead of square, bare feet unable to reach the ground from her spot on the stool.

Blake glances at Yang, worry twisting in her stomach and finding its match in Yang’s eyes, and squeezes her hand, and they slip into the room, shutting the door silently behind them. 

“Hey,” Blake says gently.

Weiss doesn’t jolt or startle, head tilting to one side and hands slowing for a moment. Yang hefts a stool in each hand and offers one to Blake, and they set one on either side of Weiss, Yang dropping onto hers and stretching, mechanical arm whirring, and Blake perching on the edge of hers.

“What’s wrong?”

Because theres’s so clearly something wrong. Weiss values her rest, even more so now that they so rarely have time for it, and she’d been the first to suggest turning in for the night, nearly falling asleep over dinner, exhaustion overtaking her after having to confront her father at the mine earlier that day; that she’s here, alone, in the middle of the night, weapon pulled to pieces not two days after she’d had it completely rebuilt, speaks almost as much as they way she seems shrunken in on herself.

Weiss has always been small, but there’s always been a power to her, a presence, something larger than herself, larger than her glyphs, her summons, her name, that made the world bend itself around her. It had always reminded Blake of Yang, who could break buildings and grimm and power to her will with a smile and a punch and a spark; two sides of the same coin, bending the world to their will. She’d counted herself lucky, at Beacon, to have them on her side; since she’d come back to them, she’d considered it a privilege she refused to squander again, because for all of Ruby’s chaotic excellence, there’d be no saving what was left of the world if Weiss Schnee and Yang Xiao Long were against it.

Weiss has always been small, but she's never looked it before now, crumbling under some invisible weight she refuses to acknowledge.

“Weiss,” Blake says, reaching out, a hand settling on her forearm. Her skin is warm, warmer than Blake’s in this godsforsaken cold that is Atlas, and she pauses in her meticulous cleaning of the dust chamber in her hands. “I’m pretty sure that if you clean that anymore it might actually fall apart.”

“The exhaust port jammed in the mine,” Weiss says calmly. “Dr. Polendina’s upgrades were effective but the sealant used on the port was designed for a larger barrel and expanded as it dried, so it narrowed the port too much and it nearly jammed the first time I used it. Too much buildup and the backdraft could’ve killed--”

“Hey,” Yang says over her, finally, gentle in a way Blake’s never seen her be with anyone else, gentle in a way Blake’s only seen a few of times before: an empty classroom, a crowded train car, the open air beside a towering waterfall. She glances past Weiss to where Blake’s staring at her and it’s the same pained look, the same open need and open caring that had broken through Blake’s overwhelming, unhealthy drive at Beacon, that had steadied her heartbeat after they’d sent Adam careening to his death and sworn she’d never be alone again. “You’re allowed to be upset about your dad, you know.”

Weiss’s hands stop moving, tension snapping in her arm under Blake’s hand, and Blake drags her stool closer, crowding in until her side is pressed fully against Weiss’s. She wraps a hesitant arm around Weiss’s shoulders, holding it loose, waiting for Weiss to throw it off, to push her away, to snap her posture sharp and formal like she so often does, but instead she stays in place, tired and hunched and so very very small, and Blake pushes closer. 

Yang’s hand curls along the back of Weiss’s neck, deadly metal fingers deadly, working up through the loose strands of hair tied up uncharacteristically sloppily until she can press softly against the base of Weiss’s skull. Weiss’s tenses tighter in the curve of Blake’s arm, brittle and wavering, and pulls in a breath that rattles heavy through the overwhelming quiet of the middle of the night. Blake reaches out carefully with her free hand, fingertips dragging along the backs of Weiss’s until she can pry the cartridge out of her hand carefully, setting it reverently down onto the table in the empty spot in the precise formation of disassembled pieces in front of them.

“It’s okay,” Blake says, glancing past Weiss’s profile and the way she’s still staring down at the table with none of the usual pride or strength that straightens her spine, to where Yang’s still all soft hands and worry for Weiss but eyes red with fury, flickers of light burning bright through her sleep-tousled hair. Blake wraps her hand around Weiss’s like she had earlier when Weiss had stood tall and strong in the face of her father doing his best to lay her low, holding tight, tight enough to bruise, tight enough to make a lesser woman wince, but Weiss has always been stronger than everyone thought she was, stronger than almost anyone Blake’s ever met, and there’s barely a flicker of recognition in her eyes at the pressure. “He’s still your father.”

“You’re allowed to be upset about it,” Yang adds, warm and soft, unbelievably soft, the way only someone who’d held together a toddler and a shattered father as a child could be, soft enough that Blake almost forgets for one short, breathless moment, that there’s probably enough power in Yang to shatter a continent.

"He was family." Blake's thumb drags along the back of Weiss's hand, back and forth, slow and methodical like how Weiss had cleaned the dust chamber.

“He’s a horrid excuse for a man,” Weiss says, blunt fingernails digging into the back of Blake’s hand. She finally moves, pulling her head up enough to look at Blake, eyes red rimmed but dry, and Blake swallows a surge of fury to rival Yang’s red eyes and crackling semblance. If Jacques Schnee walked through the door right now, there’s no telling if it’d be her or Yang who’d flatten him, but Blake’s pretty sure she’d get there first, if her rage at the pain in Weiss’s eyes was anything to go by. “I don’t miss him.”

“I know,” Blake says gently. She does know, she _does_ , because she hasn’t missed Adam Taurus for a minute since the day she realized what he was, but there are still days when she misses the simplicity of who she was before: before she knew, before she understood, when she could easily separate the world into dichotomous categories of good and bad, when she was constantly she sure that she was _right_. She squeezes Weiss’s hand tighter and wonders, not for the first time, what it must have been like to have the certainty shattered by a parent instead of someone like Adam. 

“I don’t miss him,” Weiss says again, firm and solid and extremely Weiss through and through even though there’s a tremble to her breath that doesn’t quite make it to her voice. “But it still feels-- _wrong_ , to completely leave the rest of my family behind like that.”

“There’s no wrong way to feel about it,” Yang says, looking past Weiss to Blake, because Weiss is still looking down at her hands and because Blake needs to hear it too and she knows it, they all know it, because Adam is dead and Blake is back with her team but they still haven’t ever put words to everything he did, anymore than Weiss has ever spoken to the exact ways in which Jacques Schnee hurt his family. Her semblance calms, red disappearing from her eyes and fire dimming from her hair, and her free hand finds Weiss’s. “Just because you did the right thing doesn’t mean you can’t be sad about it. However you feel is how you feel.”

She tilts closer, nudging her forehead gently against Weiss’s temple, dragging half a smile out of Weiss’s profile, and Blake burns warm with it and presses a kiss to the other side of Weiss’s head. 

“What am I supposed to do, though?” It’s barely a whisper, sandwiched between Blake and Yang, and Blake pauses because she doesn’t _know_. It’s been barely a breath since Adam, since she’s made it back to her team, to Yang, to Weiss, to Ruby and everyone else she left behind, and she still doesn’t know if she’s found her feet without looking over her shoulder for red hair and spite following her everywhere. 

“You feel it,” Yang says, disrupting Blake’s uncertainty. Her metal fingers flex gently, dragging along Weiss’s scalp, back and forth, capable of toppling a building but also of winding softly through Weiss’s hair until her eyes drift shut. “You can’t hide from it because it’ll still be there. You just have to live in it until one day you realize you haven’t thought about it as much.” 

Weiss glances over at Blake, eyes forever sharp, because of course she can feel the way there’s a new tension, shame and guilt still sitting heavy in Blake’s ribcage, and her hand turns in Blake’s until she can wind their fingers together and hold on firmly. The ache twisting up from her stomach unwinds abruptly and Blake breathes out slowly, tilts her head against Weiss’s, lets her eyes slide shut.

“When did you turn into the wise one?” Weiss says drily. Yang’s laugh rumbles through the both of them from where they’re all tangled together at the workbench, and she slaps a loud kiss against Weiss’s cheek. It drags a token protest from Weiss, sharp and loud and comforting, and Blake laughs into Weiss’s shoulder when Weiss digs an elbow into Yang’s side.

There’s something to speak to, something old and familiar, tangled lines of uncertainty between the three of them that were severed after Beacon fell, frayed ends they're still finding and sorting, and this is the closest they’ve gotten to it since Blake found her way back to them. She breathes in deep, inhaling the smell of the workshop, the medicinal Atlesian soap from the dormitory bathrooms, the faded edge of burnt dust that always clings to both Weiss and Yang no matter what they do, and for the first time since they made it to at Atlas, Blake settles.

“We should get some sleep,” Blake mumbles, arm falling from Weiss’s shoulders to her waist so she can curl more sleepily into Weiss’s side.

“I need to put this back together,” Weiss says, gesturing with one hand at the still-disassembled Myrtenaster. Blake watches, eyes half-shut, as Weiss fiddles absently with Yang’s fingers on the workbench in front of them. 

“We can help,” Yang offers.

“I don’t--” Weiss starts to say, and then her mouth snaps shut because in a blur Yang’s already reassembled the hilt, snapping the hammer and trigger back into place with a flourish and offering them dramatically to Weiss. 

“Show off,” she says, unbearably fond. Blake yawns, content to let them work, and watches half-asleep as Weiss re-seals the exhaust port and Yang puts the dust cartridges back together, the both of them bickering quietly as Yang tries valiantly to convince Weiss to add an actual gun to the weapon and Weiss sniffs derisively in response. Weiss’s posture straightens as the minutes pass, casual strength seeping back into her spine and shoulders, and Blake, still half-asleep to the sound of Weiss and Yang nitpicking at each other over whether Yang’s semblance could break through a wall of Weiss’s glyphs, smiles into Weiss’s shoulder. 

She whines when Yang drags her off the stool eventually, leaning into the solid warmth that is her side. Weiss has Myrtenaster in one hand, fully reassembled, and she smiles, uncharacteristically shy and completely unlike her, when Blake, still half-asleep, claims her hand again.

“Can we go back to bed now?” Blake mumbles, even though they’re already on their way back to the dormitory. 

“It’s not like you were asleep anyways, Belladonna,” Weiss says drily. “You were thinking so loud I’m pretty sure they could hear it in Argus.”

“It’s the only way to stay warm in this stupid city,” Blake says, indignant, and it earns her a laugh from Yang and an eye roll from Weiss.

“Ladies and gents, I present to you, Blake Belladonna!” Yang says, flinging one arm out dramatically. “Elite Huntress, former White Fang operative, savior of Haven, and completely unable to handle a little cold.”

Blake shoves her away, instead turning to flop against Weiss, who catches her easily without breaking stride and raises an eyebrow at Yang, who’s sticking her tongue out at them in response.

“Eloquent,” Weiss says coolly, even as she curls an arm around Blake’s waist and doesn’t protest when Yang grins at her, sunbright and broad, and hooks a pinky through hers lazily. 

It’s a long walk back through the cold half-lit halls of the Atlas Academy buildings, barefoot in borrowed pajamas, but Weiss is smiling again and Yang is whole and calm and Blake, between them, feels warm like home for the first time since they landed in Atlas. There’s still Salem to face down, the unending machinations of Ozpin and Ironwood to understand, too many variables in play to comprehend, so much to worry about and now a rekindled acknowledgement of an unstated something, smoldering and constant, burning in the sharp edges of Weiss’s smile and Yang’s fire. 

Blake drags one arm around Weiss’s waist, hooks her other hand into the open edge of Yang’s pocket, and holds them close as they shuffle sleepily towards the dormitory. There’s so much to worry about, but there’s also a whole open sky of possibility for them to fill together, and they’re going to be okay.


End file.
